


Watching and Waiting

by apollonious



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Friendship, Gen, Generic Virus, Pandemics, Platonic Cuddling, Quarantine, Self-Isolation, mention of Keith/Lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23383525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollonious/pseuds/apollonious
Summary: In the middle of a global viral pandemic, Pidge is struggling to stay hopeful.Then a friend arrives.
Relationships: Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	Watching and Waiting

Pidge Gunderson was curled up in a tiny ball, sitting in her desk chair with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her gaze was fixed on her computer monitor, a display taller than she was and just as wide. Various graphics were scattered around the screen’s edges: a table showing shifting numbers in real time as people of various species were tested for the virus; a chat with running updates from one of her dad’s friends, who was working on the efforts to break down its genome so that a cure could be developed, and subsequently a vaccine to keep this from happening again; and a few other things she was keeping track of. She found herself wishing she still had the Green Lion. Not that it would do her any good; no one was going off-planet until this whole thing had been figured out.

But the biggest image on the screen was a map of the planet that took up most of the display. It was covered in countless little orange dots, spreading across its surface like the rash that just so happened to be a symptom of the virus. They hadn’t been able to figure out yet exactly where the virus had come from, which was making it tricky to break it down, but the point where it had arrived on Earth was obvious.

The Garrison.

Here.

Her first instinct, when she’d been designing the map and the nanobots they were using to test people for the virus, had been to use magenta to designate those who had been infected. 

But she hadn’t quite been able to bring herself to do it. 

She’d saved this planet from a Galra invasion once, had helped to save this reality—all realities—and after all that, Pidge would be damned if she was going to let the Earth fall to _this._

Though it wasn’t like there was much she could do right now to stop it. Not more than she’d done already, anyway, not beyond showing them where it was. She just had to wait until they figured out the cure.

Until then, she could only sit here, powerless. 

Pidge sighed, letting herself slump so that her chin was resting on her knees. 

There had been so many times during the war with the Galra where Pidge had felt this powerless, certain only in the fear that there was no way she, or even Voltron, could turn the tide against such an incomprehensibly vast enemy. She’d lost count of the sleepless nights she’d spent trying to figure out whatever the latest problem had been, trying to convince herself that her efforts and those of the other Paladins—and those of Allura—hadn’t been futile.

Somehow, she’d always managed it.

Now, though, without something she could fight, she was struggling.

There was a sort of morbid fascination in watching the numbers, she had to admit. Some species were completely unaffected by the virus; in others, it was spreading so quickly that the number of infected in the table never stopped moving, just ticking up and up with no end in sight. The nanobots they were using for testing stayed on each person after they’d been tested, constantly repeating the test, and if they subsequently caught the virus, the green oval on their forehead—a thumbprint with its details obscured by the gloves the testers wore—would change to orange, and the nanobots would report it to Pidge and the officials in charge of the response team. Then they would appear as another little orange dot somewhere on the map. The fact that no one had died was a testament to the quality of their medical care, even without a cure.

There was a layer of green dots, too, to show those who hadn’t caught it, but Pidge had it toggled off. Those weren’t the ones she was worried about. Eventually there would be blue as well, to show the people who had recovered. Once a cure had been found, and people had recovered enough to flush the virus from their systems.

It was perplexing which species were being hit the hardest, though. In some groups the virus would spread in wildfire, but in species with pronounced genetic similarities, where it should have spread just as easily, hardly anyone was sick. It was making it harder to find a cure, since very few of these species’ genetics were constructed in the same way. Some of them didn’t even have DNA, at least not in the way the scientists on Earth were used to. But all the same, the virus was somehow affecting them all. It gave credence to something Pidge had suspected from the start—this disease was an attack, something someone had made to target specific species. This wasn’t just hard to figure out; it was hard to figure out _intentionally._

In the back of her head, with whatever brainpower wasn’t being used to worry about the virus itself, the cure, and her bots, she’d been trying to figure out who could have done this. It wasn’t the Galra, even if that had been Pidge’s first thought. This wasn’t the Galra’s style, and the Galra themselves were the group being hit the hardest. There weren’t many Galra on Earth, and those who were here tended to keep their heads down, to try to be as unobtrusive as possible. And now—yes, every single one of them was infected. Pidge could only hope none of them had gone off-planet before the virus had been discovered. She gave a sigh of relief that Keith was off-planet and had been for months; when she’d messaged him to warn him to stay where he was, he’d answered with only a terse affirmative and a directive to take care of herself.

Whoever had made this thing, at least their motive wasn’t terribly difficult to figure out.

Suddenly, the numbers in the table stopped moving. All of them—the tested, the healthy, the infected. As of this moment, every single person on Earth had been tested. 

It occurred to her, as it had several times by now, that this virus wouldn’t have been nearly as big a deal as it was if Earth hadn’t become such a hub for alien interaction after the end of the war. 

Her thoughts were interrupted when a new column appeared on the table, and Pidge gasped, her eyes widening. She had programmed the column to appear automatically when it was needed, but she had desperately hoped never to see it. Somewhere on the map, an orange dot winked out.

It was official.

This was killing people.

“No,” Pidge whispered, horrified. Her mouth fell open, and she felt tears springing up in her eyes. “No!” Her fist thudded against the top of her desk, rattling pens and pencils and making her tablet bounce slightly. 

It was just one so far—an Olkari. But that was one too many. And it _hurt_ that it was an Olkari.

Since the war ended, she’d felt more and more like herself as time went on—more like Katie Holt, the tech prodigy who was helping earth and its allies move into the future, and whose initials still marked her designs and comms. The Paladin she ought to be, now that they were in peacetime.

But this—the fear, the uncertainty, the disorder and disaster that felt more and more inevitable with every passing second—this was making her feel like she was back in the war. She could feel herself reverting to who she had been in the middle of the war, and that Pidge could barely even remember what it was like to be Katie. 

It felt like fighting Zarkon and the Galra all over again. 

There was nothing she could do.

And it was worse this time, because she was alone. 

A lump was quickly expanding in her throat. Pidge dipped her chin for a second, scrubbing furiously at her face with her hands and nearly knocking off her glasses. Then, with a sigh, she straightened her glasses, pumped out some hand sanitizer, and rubbed it in. She pulled up a list she’d been checking compulsively and nodded grimly. 

Her friends and family were still safe. They hadn’t been infected. 

She jumped as the buzzer on the door to her quarters went off, looking briefly over her shoulder before shrinking down further with an irritated _hmmph._ Apart from that, though, she made no response.

The door slid open.

Pidge sighed. There were very few people who could open her door, and only one who _would,_ given the circumstances. And he was supposed to be off-planet.

“Lance, what are you doing here?” she asked as the door slid shut again, not taking her eyes off the monitor. “We’re under quarantine.”

“Well, hello to you too,” he said. “I just came to see how you’re doing. You haven’t answered any of my comms, and your dad and Matt both asked me to check on you.”

“I’ve been busy,” Pidge said, pushing up her glasses and getting more hand sanitizer without looking away from the screen. 

“Busy doing what?”

“Working,” she said. “Self-isolating.”

She heard him walk up next to her. “Pidge,” he said. “Look at me.”

She did so. The monitor was casting the only light in the whole room, and it washed him out. She could still see the concern in his eyes, though, and the blue Altean marks just below them. She knew what he was seeing, too—deep circles under her eyes, and the exhaustion that had to be written all over her face.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

“It’s okay.” He pulled his bangs back, revealing the green oval gently glowing in the center of his forehead. “I just got tested, and I haven’t seen another person for two weeks. Those are the rules, right? And I know you’ve been doing the same.”

Grudgingly, Pidge nodded, pulling back her bangs to show the green mark on her own forehead. “But still. The nurse who tested you. And there must have been people in the halls.”

He shook his head. “No, Pidge. The nurse was covered from head to toe. And the halls were completely empty. People are doing what they’re supposed to.”

Pidge turned back to the map, swallowing hard. “But they’re still getting sick,” she said. “And I can’t stop it.”

She flinched as his hand landed on her shoulder. “Pidge, when was the last time you slept?”

She rubbed her eyes, then reached automatically for the hand sanitizer. “What day is it?”

“You need to get some rest,” he said gently.

“Lance, no, I can’t,” she said, appalled at the way her voice was shaking. “They’re close to cracking it, I know they are, and when they figure it out, I need to be ready to start programming the nanobots with the cure.”

“You’re not going to be ready to program anything if you haven’t slept in a week.”

“You don’t understand,” she insisted. “It’s going to take _days,_ Lance, and we don’t have days. People are _dying.”_

“And is you staring at a screen going to keep them from dying?”

She wanted to correct his grammar, but was too tired to work it out. “But there are going to be so many different cures. None of the species that are getting it are close enough to each other that one cure will work. What will cure a Galra could kill an Olkari. And vice versa.”

He sighed, reaching down to grab her hand and pull her to her feet. “Listen, Pidge. I know what you’re going through better than almost anyone. Everyone’s depending on you and the rest of the team, and you feel like you owe it to them to save them. It’s just like it was in the war. But if you don’t rest, you’re not going to be able to save _anyone._ Running yourself into the ground while you wait for the cure won’t do any good.”

“Quiznak,” Pidge muttered, letting her shoulders sag as the concentration that had been keeping her alert for so many days finally broke off. She felt her hand shaking in Lance’s.

“Yeah, I know.”

“When did you get so wise?” she groaned. 

Lance snorted. “I’m not. It’s just that you’re sleep-deprived, so it balances out.”

Pidge nodded, letting him lead her toward her narrow bunk, the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders. “How’s Keith?” she murmured, yawning so wide her jaw cracked now that she’d stopped focusing on the screen. 

Lance smiled. “He’s good.” A blush tinged his cheeks. “We’re good.”

She climbed into bed, and Lance slipped in next to her. “I’m just going to make sure you don’t sneak out again,” he said. “You’re sleeping for at least six hours unless something comes through from the cure team before then.”

“But how will I know—”

“I’ll keep an eye on it and wake you up if we get anything.”

Pidge nodded, yawning again, and nestled into Lance’s shoulder. She’d slept like this often enough at the Castle of Lions, when Lance had found her up late worrying at one problem or another. Much like he’d done tonight.

“What about you and that Altean girl I saw you with last time you were visiting?” Lance asked

Pidge shrugged, her eyelids already sliding shut. “She was nice, but it didn’t really go anywhere.”

“That’s too bad,” Lance said, and kissed her forehead. “Sleep now, Pidge. Tomorrow, you can get started on saving the world again.”

“Yeah, okay,” Pidge mumbled. She took a deep breath and let it out, feeling herself sinking into sleep. When the morning came, she would keep doing her part, keep fighting this thing the only way she could.

And she knew now, from Lance’s reassuring warmth beneath her and the steady pace of his breathing, that she wouldn’t be alone.

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, moral of the story: don't wear yourself out staring at screens to keep up with what's going on, don't isolate yourself so thoroughly you lose touch with friends, and just do what you can. Remember, you're not alone.
> 
> (And also, don't try to socialize unless you know the person you're socializing with has self-isolated for the recommended amount of time.)
> 
> I hope this is helpful. If you'd like, please leave a comment!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
